Increasingly sophisticated application programs are being developed that can greatly enhance the productivity of a collaboration session. Such application programs typically execute on a processing device, such as a computer or smartphone, that is involved in the collaboration session, and enable program application functionality that is useful for a topic of the call.
As an example, a group of executives may participate in a conference call to discuss potential future financial numbers for a business. Each of the participants may have a processing device, such as a computer, that is also used by the respective participant in the collaboration session. A spreadsheet collaboration application may be executed which is capable of receiving input from at least two of the participants and updating a spreadsheet in response thereto. One or more of the participants manipulates the spreadsheet, which may be concurrently viewed by all of the participants, by entering or modifying numbers in various “what if” scenarios to see potential revenue outcomes. The output, such as a display of data, from such collaboration applications may be referred to as an artifact. Because each of the participants views the artifacts of the spreadsheet collaboration application in real time as if all of the participants were in the same geographical location, these types of collaboration applications can result in significant productivity and be the basis of important decisions.
One potential problem that arises during such collaboration sessions, however, is that the underlying basis of a decision made during the collaboration session may not be readily determinable at a later date. In other words, referring again to the example above, three months after the collaboration session, an executive may recall that he agreed to a certain course of action during the collaboration session, but the exact reasons that led him to agree may have been forgotten. While audio recording devices exist that enable a collaboration session to be recorded in an audio file, the audio file is simply an audio track of the entire call. Trying to find the relevant three or four minutes of dialog associated with a particular portion of the collaboration session can be time-consuming and frustrating. Moreover, the artifacts generated by a collaboration application during a collaboration session and viewed by the participants are not captured in an audio recording. For example, if during the above example a participant entered a particularly compelling scenario into the spreadsheet application which, after being displayed on the participants' display devices, persuaded the participants to follow a particular course of action, that particular artifact, i.e., the particular display output that convinced the participants to follow the particular course of action, may be quite important, but will not exist in an audio recording of the collaboration session.
Accordingly, there is a need for a collaboration timeline that identifies artifacts generated by collaboration applications during a collaboration session and facilitates subsequent identification of such artifacts and the pertinent discussions surrounding the generation of the artifacts.